The Internet has become an important social communications medium. Technologies including email, Instant Messaging and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), are utilized by hundreds of millions of individuals to communicate and socialize with each other. Yet Web browsing, which is the primary means of displaying and interacting with text, images and other information located on Web pages, has remained a solitary activity. Web users currently do not have an efficient way to browse the Web together and to share their thoughts about the Web pages they are viewing, and the information and images they contain. In contrast, in the offline world, comparable activities and tasks are often performed socially or as a group. For instance, friends can shop together at a clothing store and point out and discuss particular clothes or outfits they are considering purchasing.
Many Internet users attempt to approximate the offline group experience by manually supplementing Web browser coordination with additional technologies, such as voice via telephone or text via email and Instant Message. However, independently coordinating multiple Web browsers and attempting to describe and identify particular items on a particular Web page through voice or text can be difficult and frustrating.
Various co-browse methods have been developed, but they remain unpopular. Besides being difficult to use, they fail to insure that each user's view of the Web content remains the same throughout the co-browse session, causing contusion and uncertainty among users. Existing co-browse methods also fail to enable users to communicate and visually share their thoughts in real time regarding the Web pages and items they are viewing. Co-browse users can feel disconnected because a social face-to-face experience is not simulated.
Other methods have been developed to simulate offline group experiences in an online setting. For example, Web conferencing allows individuals to view presentations and conduct meetings online. Generally, Web conferencing systems broadcast the entire screen of one computer onto the screens of other computers participating in the conference. Examples of existing Web conferencing systems include WebEx (www.webex.com), GoToMeeting (www.gotomeeting.com), and Microsoft LiveMeeting (www.office.microsoft.com/livemeeting). These systems are generally autocratic in nature. A meeting manager controls the session, which may be displayed in a viewer's Web browser via, a separate application or plug-in. However, the available Web conferencing systems are not designed to enable simultaneous two-way communication on Web pages, nor to allow synchronized co-browsing and equal participation via visual communication.
Online collaboration and digital annotation systems have also been developed, which typically allow users to create and store annotations of Web pages and digital documents for later retrieval. Examples include iMarkup (www.imarkup.com) and SharedCopy (www.sharedcopy.com). However, these systems do not allow co-browsing or same time communication.
Additionally, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2005/0289451, to Kashi et al., and U.S. Patent Application Publication Nos. 2006/0010368 and 2006/0031755, to Kashi, all disclose digital ink annotations, which are captured and stored for later retrieval. The ink, annotations are made by a user and rendered on a Web browser. However, Kashi fails to disclose simultaneously displaying ink annotations on multiple Web browsers. Ink annotations are correlated at the end of the drawing stroke, and then transmitted to a server, such that simultaneous display on multiple Web browsers of ink annotations as they are progressively created is not possible.
Therefore, there remains a need for an approach that allows two or more individuals to co-browse and visually communicate their thoughts regarding the Web page they are viewing, such that Web browsing is no longer confined to being a solitary activity.